Safdarjang Hospital is currently having 1531 beds and is one of the largest hospitals in this part of the country. It caters to the population of Delhi and adjoining states. Vardhman Mahavir Medical College attached to Safdarjang Hospital was inaugurated by Sh. Atal Bihari Vajpayee the then Hon'ble Prime Minister on 17th December, 2001 and started functioning with the first batch of 100 students in March 2002.

This hospital provides services in almost all the major specialties’ and super specialties like Cardio thoracic surgery, Cardiology, Cardio vascular sciences centre, Neuro surgery, Burns and Plastic surgery, Urology, Respiratory and Critical care Medicine, Gastroenterology etc. Further it has modern imaging facilities including C.T.Scanner, Cardiac Cath Lab, and M.R.I. Spiral C.T. Scan Etc. The hospital is one of the prestigious Government Hospital located in South Delhi. There is no fixed catchment area for the hospital and patients are also coming from neighboring States, i.e., U.P., Haryana, Punjab, Rajasthan, Bihar etc. This attains significance in case of a disaster involving mass casualties as the public is expected to flock to this hospital for its sheer reputation. Hence, it becomes imperative that the hospital has a plan for management of disasters.

DEFINITION OF DISASTER

The term disaster implies unexpected and significantly large rush of casualties/emergencies clearly in excess of the normal, caused by a natural calamity or man made disasters such as accidents/ terrorist attacks/ warfare or any other similar situation which cannot be dealt by the organization in a routine way.

TYPES OF DISASTERS

It is not possible to enumerate all possible situations which may arise from time to time. However commonly disaster is:-